


Dig All Day in the Hot Sun: Prison Labor & the Ethos of Productive Suffering at Camp Green Lake [Meta]

by osteophage



Category: Holes (2003)
Genre: Gen, Meta, Morality, Nonfiction, Punishment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:54:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24446152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osteophage/pseuds/osteophage
Summary: Metacommentary on the thematic implications around authority, morality, and prison labor in the movie Holes.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7





	Dig All Day in the Hot Sun: Prison Labor & the Ethos of Productive Suffering at Camp Green Lake [Meta]

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to [Pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/1263541).

Why are the boys being forced to dig holes? That's one of the core questions raised by the plot of _Holes_ (2003), based on the Louis Sachar novel of the same name, in which the inmates at a juvenile delinquent center are required to go out every day and dig. Discussions of the story typically remark on its portrayal of racism, and I've even seen it analyzed in terms of [queerness](https://fandomsandfeminism.tumblr.com/post/75370866418/filling-in-the-holes-the-potential-queerness-of), but I've yet to see someone focus on the exploitation of prison labor -- which is a bit odd, once I got to thinking about it, considering its centrality to the plot. And if you take a look at that aspect of the story, it's got some interesting things to say. 

In its characterization of authority figures and its exploration of their cover stories and motivations, _Holes_ expresses a kind of understated ambivalence toward the prison industrial complex, framing it in a way that's neither abolitionist nor wholly uncritical. It is technically a Disney movie, after all, so there's only so much we can reasonably expect. Even so, it makes some interesting choices. This is a movie in which the adult authority figures at a juvenile delinquent center serve as the villains, terrorizing their inmates with physical violence, verbal degradation, and incitement to paranoia -- and the rationale they invoke for forcing the boys to dig holes is presented as a ludicrous cover story, obscuring a much more selfish motive. In light of all this and how it's portrayed, _Holes_ can also be interpreted as a satirical commentary on the ethos of productive suffering. 

### The Villainy of Authority Figures

The main character of the movie answers to three main authority figures who are positioned as the villains of the story, abusing their authority through physical, verbal, and psychological violence. Each differs slightly in their most highlighted flaws, but each one is essentially characterized in a negative light. 

#### Physical Violence

One of the adults in charge, known only as "Mr. Sir," deliberately styles himself as a tough, hypermasculine authority figure. He carries a gun, demands to be called by two male honorifics, and revels in intimidating the prisoners. As he says to the Warden, "when they see me coming, a little shiver runs up their spine." In general he's shown to be a short-tempered, vindictive man, and when angered, he's not above abusing his authority.

This comes to the fore especially after he sustains an injury from a confrontation with another character. In the mess hall, an inmate asks him "What happened to your face?" (in reference to the visible injuries), and Mr. Sir responds by physically grabbing the boy, yelling in his face, and throwing a violent tantrum. Mr. Sir blames one of the inmates personally for these injuries, and in another scene, he takes revenge on the boy by pointedly refusing to refill his canteen. Mind you, this refusal takes place outdoors in the heat of Texas; refusing him water is effectively _torture_. Yet there's nothing that the inmates can do about abuses like these and no one they can appeal to, highlighting the inherent injustice of the situation.

Eventually, all three main authority figures even prove willing to let certain inmates _die_ and want to cover up the truth of what happened, but there's a number of warning signs well before then.

#### Disrespect & Degradation

Relative to Mr. Sir's hypermasculinity, Pendanski seems positioned as the polar opposite -- something textually emphasized by the fact that the boys have nicknamed him "Mom." You can pretty much get the picture just from how he's introduced:

> **Pendanski:** I just want you to know that you may have done some bad things, but that does NOT make you a bad kid! I respect you, Stanley!
> 
> **Mr. Sir:** Start that touchy-feely crap, I'm outta here.

This is initially presents Pendanski as the relatively "nice" one of the two, albeit in a bit of a dweeby and saccharine way. There's a sinister element to him, though, even before the story reveals the secret of Camp Green Lake, and that's initially hinted at through his derisive and ableist attitude towards the inmate Hector Zeroni.

To understand exactly how that plays out, you first have to understand the roles that names & naming play in this movie as a marker of social relations. As mentioned above, "Mr. Sir" insists on being called by that name and that name alone -- he's able to enforce this preference due to his authority. Everyone, including Pendanski, calls Mr. Sir "Mr. Sir." The inmates are also shown to have nicknames for each other and show a strong preference for these nicknames, but they're only able to enforce this preference on those lower in the heirarchy. For instance, when a new inmate addresses Armpit as "Theodore" for the first time, Armpit responds by [putting him in a headlock and then pushing him to the ground](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB7JcLn9aDQ). Armpit deals with the exact same issue with Pendanski, who repeatedly disrepects his name preference, but with Pendanski he's unable to do anything about it because Pendanski has authority over him. This demonstrates both the power relations at play and also establishes something about Pendanski's character: he makes a point of using the inmates' legal names. As he makes a point of saying, "I prefer to use the names their parents gave them. The names _society_ will _recognize_ them by."

It's especially significant, then, that unlike with all the other inmates, Pendanski does _not_ use the legal name for the inmate Hector Zeroni. He calls him only by his nickname, "Zero," which he says is because "there's _nothing_ going on in his _stupid_ little head." Later on, Pendanski becomes emphatically insistent that Hector is unintelligent, claiming that "he's so stupid, he doesn't even know he's stupid." The boy he's talking about is a sympathetic character, so it doesn't take a critical disability perspective for this hostility to easily read as patronizing and cruel.

#### The Suspicion of Surveillance

In another case, the suspicious naming behavior is actually the reverse. The Warden uses the nicknames of every inmate, even the ones who've never even met her before, raising the question of how she knows so much about them. At a later point, Caveman asks the other inmates about this, and they begin casually discussing the possibility that the whole camp is bugged. Smash cut to the next scene, and Caveman is shown in the showers, nervously looking around as if searching for cameras.

This is issue is touched on only briefly in these couple of scenes, but I'm drawing attention to it for just how anomalous this is for a mainstream prison narrative. In other entertainment media, it's very common for prison showers to be depicted as sites of anxiety for a completely different reason: [the threat of rape](https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/prison-rape-not-punchline). And specifically, the threat of rape by [a fellow inmate](https://www.pride.com/tv/2019/2/11/why-does-film-tv-treat-mens-sexual-assault-punchline). Yet here, Stanley's anxieties about the showers has nothing to do with the other inmates and everything to do with the threat of surveillance by authority.

In these ways -- physical violence, verbal degradation, incitement to paranoia about privacy (and the associated overall loss of agency in the inmates' lives) -- the movie constructs the main three authority figures as threatening and untrustworthy, even apart from the core issue of the plot itself. This characterization then adds additional weight to the way the movie casts suspicion on the foundational "philosophy" of Camp Green Lake.

### The Ethos of Productive Suffering

Why sentence to someone to eighteen months of digging holes in the ground? The justification for the entire premise of Camp Green Lake (as a "correctional" facility) lies in **the idea that punishment -- or rather, suffering -- is, itself, productive**. Early on, Mr. Sir explains it like this: "You take a bad boy, make him dig holes all day in the hot sun, and it turns him into a good boy. And that's our philosophy here at Camp Green Lake."

The phrasing here is intentionally absurd. The childish, simplistic wording ("bad boy" and "good boy") and the emphasis on the unpleasantness of the experience itself ("all day in the hot sun") cut right to the heart of the whole ethos, stripped down to its bare essentials, in a style of phrasing that sounds unsophisticated and just kind of silly. This alone clues the viewer in that this might not be something to take seriously.

Narratively, the movie repudiates this "philosophy" in a couple of different ways. For one thing, it's ineffectual. For another thing, the inmates don't take it seriously. And when the adults do take it seriously, this is portrayed more like a power trip than a legitimate argument, arguably even contradicting their own rationale.

If digging holes is really meant to "build character," it does not appear to be working. If it were, after all, you'd expect the characters who've done a lot of hole digging to demonstrate a lot of humility, patience, generosity, or any other traits associated with "good character." Yet the inmates don't seem to be improving from the experience. In fact, the "hot sun" is even cited as a reason for why Zigzag and Caveman become aggressive with each other and get into a physical altercation, which isn't exactly compatible with viewing it as a positive moral influence.

In another scene, the prisoners openly regard the philosophy as ridiculous, as demonstrated in this exchange:

> **Armpit:** It's the lizards we working for, man. We building houses for 'em. I mean, yesterday I saw like ten of them in one hole.
> 
> **X-Ray:** Man, we ain't digging for no lizards.
> 
> **Armpit:** What we digging for then, man?
> 
> **X-Ray:** [smiling, sarcastically] Like Mr. Sir said. We digging to build some character.
> 
> **All:** [laughter]

When cited by the cynical X-Ray, "building character" becomes a self-evident punchline. None of the boys are shown to take it seriously.

The authority figures, though, still express an emphatic defensiveness of this philosophy -- sometimes in a way that even undermines their own credibility. In the following exchange, Mr. Sir and the Warden extend the importance of hole digging into a ban of completely unrelated activities: 

> **Warden:** Okay, from now on, I don't want ANYONE digging anyone else's hole. Is that clear? And no more reading lessons.
> 
> **Caveman:** Why? I mean, as long as the hole gets dug, who cares who's digging it, right?
> 
> **Mr. Sir:** YOU KNOW WHY YOU'RE DIGGING HOLES?! BECAUSE IT'S _GOOD_ FOR YOU. It teaches you a lesson.
> 
> **Warden:** If Zero digs your hole for you, you're not learning your lesson, are ya?
> 
> **Caveman:** Well why can't I still just dig my hole and teach him how to read?
> 
> **Warden:** [sternly] Because I said so.

The initial scandal was that Zero was helping Caveman dig in exchange for reading lessons, so theoretically, if individual digging is all that's important, then the only ban called for is a ban on collaborative digging. Yet the Warden extends the ban into something completely unrelated to the actual offense. To top it all off, the classic "Because I said so" cliché cements this as a truly arbitrary flexing of authority. All together this reflects poorly on the supposed rationale of self-improvement -- not just because "Because I said so" is a cheap move, but because the Warden is _actively interfering with self-improvement_ in the form of actual life skills.

More broadly, this also positions Camp Green Lake's mission as deliberately individualistic, in opposition to collaboration and teamwork. The hard work of hole digging needs to be undertaken alone in order for prisoners to supposedly "learn their lesson." This means that the "lesson" they're supposed to be learning is explicitly _not_ anything to do with cooperation, coordination, or learning how to get along and work well with others. Otherwise, if these skills/values _were_ compatible with "building character" as the authorities understand it, then there should have been no reason to object to prisoners working together to dig the same amount of holes.

Of course, in the end, what discredits the supposed rationale more than anything else is the revelation of a completely different reason for all the holes.

### The Real Reason for the Holes

From the beginning, the authority figures at Camp Green Lake exhibit suspicious behavior that invites the viewer to question whether they really believe their own claims. For instance, this is the conversation where Mr. Sir introduces the aforementioned "philosophy" of the camp:

> **Mr. Sir:** This isn't a Girl Scout camp. Nobody's gonna babysit you. Dig here. Now if you find anything interesting, you are to report it to me or Pendanski. If the Warden likes what you find, you get the rest of the day off.
> 
> **Stanley:** What am I supposed to be looking for, Mr. Sir?
> 
> **Mr. Sir:** You're not looking for anything. You're building character. You take a bad boy, make him dig holes all day in the hot sun, and it turns him into a good boy. That's our philosophy here at Camp Green Lake. Start digging.

It's a suspicious deflection. Mr. Sir denies that the holes are supposed to serve any particular purpose even though his instructions explicitly mention what to do if anything "interesting" is found.

Later scenes serve to heighten the suspicion. When Stanley digs up a fossil, for instance, he wonders if this might earn him a reward, but Pendanski tells him "the Warden isn't interested in fossils." And when Stanley finds something that the authorities _do_ judge as "interesting," they enact a more concentrated digging effort in the area and have the inmates _sift_ the dirt. It's unmistakeable at that point that they are, in fact, looking for something.

The Warden's actual goal with Camp Green Lake is one that's somewhat fantastical in nature -- fitting with the movie's overall sensibility toward fate and magic -- but also exhibits some real-world parallels. The actual, genuine purpose of the camp is to exploit the inmates' labor in a search for buried treasure. Or, in short: for money. It's all about the money. Effectively, then, this is a story about using prison labor for profit.

### Thematic Implications

This adds up to certain thematic implications about the prison industrial complex. The characters who most faithfully espouse the philosophy of productive suffering are the same characters who are depicted as violent, nasty, and villainous. As it turns out, this philosophy is actually being used as a cover for the pursuit of financial gain. Combine the villainous framing of authority with the express in-story goals of those villains, and **effectively this is a story that _satirizes_ the use of ethical justifications ("building character") for the exploitation of prison labor.**

With that said, of course, _Holes_ doesn't fully commit to a theme of abolitionism. The happy ending to the story involves the villains getting arrested by the cops and shown "the other side of the criminal justice system." In this way, it's implied that more arrests and more legal punishment (and likely prison time) serve as a solution, or at least, fair retribution, for their cruelty. The cops who arrest them are characters who've accompanied Stanley's lawyer, too, narratively positioning them on the side of good. This leaves Stanley's wrongful arrest and the abuses at Camp Green Lake to be understood as mere abberations in an otherwise just and legitimate system. In these ways, _Holes_ ensures that the political implications of Camp Green Lake don't necessarily stand out as potentially objectionable to the conservative viewer.

At the same time, I do think the movie has something to offer as a distillation of a certain ethos. The "philosophy" of Camp Green Lake boils it down into such a simple string of words: You take a bad boy, make him dig holes all day in the hot sun, and it turns him into a good boy.

#### Parallels in the Real World

Here in reality, the lines of argument for justifying prison labor typically aren't as cartoonish as Mr. Sir's formulation, but the plot point does have some real-world parallels. These lie in both the financial incentives entwined with incarceration and the justificatory narratives of productive suffering, in regards to prison labor and beyond. 

For corporations and federal employers, the appeal for always comes back to the profit motive. Simply put, [prison labor is very cheap](https://www.vox.com/2018/8/24/17768438/national-prison-strike-factory-labor). That's not the only consideration involved, but it's still worth discussing as a factor here. In the United States, a country [infamous for its high incarceration rate](http://%20https://www.aclu.org/issues/smart-justice/mass-incarceration), the law allows for prison inmates to be paid [well below the federal minimum wage](https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/04/10/wages/) \-- sometimes even less than a dollar per hour. 

Using prison inmates for labor is sometimes defended as reducing recidivism rates, i.e. making it so that convicts are less likely to get in trouble again after they get out. In this way, prison labor is characterized as beneficial. In a [2017 annual report [pdf]](https://www.unicor.gov/publications/reports/FY2017_AnnualMgmtReport.pdf) put out by UNICOR (a federal prison labor program in the U.S.), they assert that "Offenders who participate in the program are 24 percent less likely to recidivate." I'm not professionally trained in statistics, but evaluating the particulars is besides the point. The point is that, in more sophisticated language, some people really do rationalize prison labor in this kind of way -- as beneficial, as productive. As [this article](https://people.howstuffworks.com/prison-labor-really-slave-labor.htm) put it, "work seems to work." 

(Then again, as [this other article](https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/01/prison-labor-laws-wages/) suggests, "Imagine how much more recidivism could be reduced if these private companies were forced to acknowledge their incarcerated workers as employees.") 

These ethical formulations matter to think about even outside the context of criminal sentencing because they come up in other contexts, as well. Since I'm posting this on the internet, I invite you to think about how this plays out online. How are acts of harassment typically justified? As "teaching a lesson" to someone who did something (supposedly) immoral or wrong. Whether or not the targets actually did what they were accused of doing (or whether those behaviors are actually bad) is besides the point, because the answers to those questions will vary from case to case. The point is that this kind of approach to conflict -- attempting to hurt and frighten people as punishment -- regards the experience of suffering as morally productive.


End file.
